THE ERASERS

are set to erase

Monday, October 27, 2008

OVEREXPOSURE

Roman Jakobson rejected the idea of a language spoken by a single person as a "perverse fiction". Idiolect was a kind of loner language prowling on the outskirts of communication. Now, it seems, the entire world has become idiolectal, speaking to no one, since communication now communicates nothing but itself. The world has no worse enemy than the one it has become. Henceforth, all it asks for, all we desire, is to dissolve in communication.

The narrative spans the twenty-four-hour period following a series of eight murders in eight days, presumably the work of a terrorist group. After the ninth murder, the investigation is turned over to a police agent, who may in fact be the assassin.